GPS Information

GPS navigation devices work off the method of U.S. satellites to pinpoint geographic location. GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and was initially employed through the American military as a nuclear deterrent in the course of the Cold War arms race. Ironically, it was throughout the Cold War that President Ronald Reagan, the epitome of your Cold Warrior, directed that GPS be created available for civilian applications following the Korean Airlines Flight 007 tragedy, one from the tensest moments in the entire Cold War. This incident occurred when a Boeing 747 strayed into the airspace with the now-defunct Soviet Union and was shot down, killing all aboard, including a sitting United States Congressman. Investigations concluded that a navigational error was to blame, and tracking procedures were changed so that you can avert similar accidents in the future.

GPS navigation devices can in fact be traced back to World War II and the ground-based radio navigation systems developed throughout that time, such as LORAN and Decca. Today’s GPS allows soldiers get their bearings inside the dark as well as unfamiliar territory, gives tracking information on potential targets, guides missiles and bombs, and even helps in the creation of reconnaissance maps. Civilian applications contain land surveying and time transfer (synchronization of clocks). Usually speaking, GPS navigation units are classified as civilian if it can’t be considered munitions, or weapons, through the U.S. government. For instance, those capable of operating above sixty thousand feet at speeds of the thousand knots can’t be exported without having unique licenses. Otherwise, this kind of GPS navigation devices may be very easily installed in a ballistic missile.

The technology behind GPS navigation units is created up of three parts. Most obviously, the satellite system needs to be in place. This comprises some twenty-four to thirty satellites in medium earth orbit. Then there is the control method, which is in turn composed of a master handle station and an alternate master handle station plus any number of shared and dedicated ground antennae and monitoring stations. Finally, the user component is simply all the individual end-users around the planet, military and civilian.
GPS has turn out to be a global tool for the frequent great despite its military origins. Just like the internet, also originally conceived in response to war and also the threat of war, GPS has grown beyond such narrow applications in death and destruction to the myriad of commercial, scientific, and recreational uses now obtainable. Nearly no aspect of our modern 21st Century lives are not touched by it, from the emergency rescue personnel dispatched to the conversations transmitted over cellular networks.